I'm stuck on a really old computer with ~500MB RAM and a 6GB HDD. It has Windows 2000. Being not from this side of the century (it originally ran Windows 98), the BIOS does not have an option to boot from USB. It also does not have a CD burner, and I don't have any money to order a liveCD off the internet.

So I only have a USB port and a floppy drive to work with. When I tried DSL, I had a floppy that contained the kernel and syslinux. I realize that the Ubuntu kernel is too large to fit on one 1.44MB floppy, but is there some sort of program/boot loader that could load from USB from a floppy?

Does the BIOS have an option to network boot?
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Jorge CastroDec 14 '11 at 0:29

You guys are incredible! Sorry for not being involved, I've been having kernel errors with my old buggy 2000. I never thought I'd see so many comments in so little time! Thank you all! I am indescribably grateful. While I haven't been able to try any of these yet, I plan on printing them all out and doing so ASAP. (Who needs food when you can have Ubuntu?) My internet connection is really, really slow (I got my .iso off of Bittorrent in ~2h) so net booting is not an option) My BIOS has from CD (no burner), floppy, and HDD. I use some proprietary netcard, so it wouldnt be recognized anyways.
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WindowsEscapistDec 17 '11 at 1:41

This is probably pretty obvious and I just don't see it, but where should I place my iso? And also, I seem to ave lost the ability to edit my boot.ini (I know I could earlier, my admin must have done something). Is there any way that I could get around this?
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WindowsEscapistDec 17 '11 at 1:29

Put the Ubuntu desktop.iso in C:\ , not in a sub directory. Perhaps your admin can help you with the edit ;)
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bodhi.zazenDec 17 '11 at 1:31

Oh! I just realized something. I don't have enough HDD space for the .iso in C:\, so could i set it to in a subdirectory in my flash drive? I know that DSL sees my flash drive as sda1, but is that what grldr will see it as? And if its not too much trouble, could I have an example? See, my dream is to have a flash drive not only USB-bootable but by a sort of "rescue floppy" if you will with a LiveCD persistent Ubuntu.
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WindowsEscapistDec 17 '11 at 2:25

Well, the question is if the BIOS or grub will recognize the flash drive at that time in the boot process. My guess would be not. Can you move user data off the C drive ?
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bodhi.zazenDec 17 '11 at 4:24

The img file is in the Super Grub disk iso, under [BOOT]/Bootable_NoEmulation.iso

You can install Super Grub disk. onto a floppy drive using RawWrite for Windows. Download the Rawwrite Binary (the .zip file - 0.7 is the lastest at time of writing). You can use Peazip to extract the zip file.

With RawWrite, select the image file as and click write (after inserting a floppy disk) and it should write to the floppy drive.

(If you are using the target computer to view this, then write the following instructions down, or print them out)

Reboot and boot from the floppy drive, with USB drive plugged in. Get to the command line (you may or may not have the menu pop up.)

Once there you will need to find your boot device. (Glance at the code below). If you only have 1 hard drive it will be hd1 for the second hard drive - the usb drive (the numbering starts from 0). The second number afterwords is your partiton number. For a USB drive it us usually 1 for the first partition (numbering starts from 1). Enter the code below to boot from your USB drive.

set root=(hd1,1)
chainloader +1
boot

(Line 1: select boot device, Line 2: Say that we will just ask it to boot, Line 3: "Now! Boot now!")

2) What's different here is that Puppy is extraordinarily small, yet quite full-featured. Puppy boots into a ramdisk and, unlike live CD distributions that have to keep pulling stuff off the CD, it loads into RAM.

3)This means that all applications start in the blink of an eye and respond to user input instantly.

4)Puppy Linux has the ability to boot off a flash card or any USB memory device, CDROM, floppy disks, internal hard drive.

Now complete guide to install Puppy Linux from floppy through usb drive.

note: Wake2pup tool is specifically built for puppy linux..therefore it can be applied to all latest puppy variants (lucid,racy,wary,slacko).. so it may be not for other distro(havn't tested but if it can be done for other distro..i will edit this post asap)

Limitation:- The whole tutorial is tested in vmware by booting from floppy drive through usb drive ..which worked but still it is tested on virtual system , not on real system...

I am assuming that you have working windows 98 with working floppy drive.

-1. 1) He cannot boot of a CD or USB drive from the bios. Only from a floppy disk. 2) Puppy is too large to fit on a floppy. 120MB (Puppy) > 1.44 MB (Floppy disk).
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PortablejimDec 13 '11 at 11:52

@Portablejim I was suggesting him the os & yaa! by no way puppy gonna fit into floppy(plus I didn't mean this). There are two softwares that handles the line 4, 1) wakepup2 -> that solves usb boot through floppy 2)Puppy Universal Installer(comes preinstalled)-> once puppy booted through usb, you can install wherever you want.There are lots of features that I can't write here ..thats why i pasted links.
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emtin4Dec 14 '11 at 0:02

@nitinmartolia I think you missed what the question was asking for in your answer. The OP wants a program he can install and boot from a floppy so he can load Ubuntu/Lubuntu/Puppy Linux/whatever through a USB drive. However, your previous comment mentioned WakePup2, which does look like what the OP wants; I'd suggest rewriting your answer to explain how to set that utility up and use it instead of being merely a distro recommendation / feature list.
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Christopher Kyle HortonDec 14 '11 at 0:40

1

@nitinmartolia If you edit your answer to refer to wakepup2 as a way of booting a USB drive from a floppy drive and include instructions on how to do it, I will remove my -1. Improving the answer further may get a +1.
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PortablejimDec 14 '11 at 3:05